2001
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9:38 a.m. - 02-21-2003
Taxes, Moving and just plain bad news.
"I want my two dollars!"
First off, I have to say, despite all the fuckin' shitty ass stuff that has happened recently in my life, I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy. Two reasons mainly. One, I've got the love of a fantastic woman, who I really don't deserve. And two, because Mandy/Harbinger signed my guestbook and called me cuddly and loveable. Heeee...I'm blushin'!
Ok, time to bring the happiness level down to subterranean levels, unfortunately. I have well and truly fucked us bad this time. And I mean bad. See, technically, I'm self-employed being an independent contractor for the company that owns the web site I work on. Every month, they send me a check for my services but don't take taxes or anything out of it. It's supposed to be my responsibility to handle that. Well, I don't really understand what I'm supposed to do and how much to take out so I wasn't really doing it. Besides the fact that, up until 2 months ago, we were using my entire check to live on and didn't have any "spare" money to send in for taxes. I figured, what the hell, we'll wait until taxes are due and then pay everything at once, it shouldn't be more than a couple of thousand dollars...right? WRONG!!
We go to H&R Block to get our taxes done and the lady, before she shows us our return, says, "I hate to tell you this..." and then scrolls down to the bottom of our return. We owe. Ok, no big deal. How much do we owe?? OVER $7,000!! $7,585 to be exact. Jesus fuckin' christ. And to make it worse, Petsmart didn't hardly take anything out of the wife's check. She doesn't claim any dpendants so they should be taking a ton out of her check, but for some reason they didn't. Her W2 said that she made a little over $10K last year and they only took out $375. $375?? What the fuck?! It should have been more like $2000. That would have been a huge help in the end. So, now we have to figure out how to get $7,585 by April 15. Well, to quote Dana Carvey as George Bush, "Not gonna happen." What we're going to have to do is get as much together as we can and send it in to the IRS. They'll notice that the totals don't match and they'll send us a letter saying this is what you owe and this is what you paid. How do you want to pay the rest. If we work it right, we could possibly send in about $5,000 to $5,500, leaving only about $2,000 left, which is much more manageable, sort of. Problem is, we've also got taxes for this year to think about as well. Fuckin' government.
On a good note, the wife is totally fired up on moving over to the west coast. The west coast of Florida, I mean. She's found 2 great little places that she's really pumped about over in a small town called La Belle, about 30 minutes east of Fort Myers. Both places are farm-type places, 4 bedroom 2 bath houses with about 5 acres of land and they're both about $120,000. I know that sounds like a lot, but in reality it's a great deal. In the area where we live now, there are houses that don't even have one acre of land (and the houses aren't that big) for well over $125,000. So, this is a great opportunity. We just need to see 1) if we can get a mortgage (since we have a bankruptcy in our past) and 2) what kind of monthly payments we can get. I'm almost positive that, if we can get a mortgage, the payments will be at least $200-300 less than what we pay for rent here. That's an extra $2,000-3,600 a year. The cool thing is, she's even getting tired of waiting on her mom. She's just about to the point where she's gonna move whether her mom comes or not. It's about time. She really needs to get some distance between her mother. I'm sure it will be rough on her mother at first, but she'll get over it. She's managed with her youngest daughter in Ohio these past 2-3 months. And we're only looking at moving a few hours away, not a few states. I'll try and keep you all updated on how things are going.
This summer we're planning on taking a trip back to Missouri so I can see my family again. The cool thing is, especially after this whole income tax fiasco, is that my parents are going to pay for the plane tickets. All we have to do is cover the rental car. That, we can handle. Thing is, we have to wait until MonkeyBoy is out of school in June and I have to go to Oshkosh at the end of July so we've only got a few weeks to get the trip in. I'm going to go and look at ticket prices and see how good a deal we can get and try and get everything planned ahead of time. I can't wait. I really miss seeing everyone and I'm dying to show off my cute, adorable kids.
Well, I'm really starting to run down, guess I need to eat something. Catch you all later. Take care.
